Question

I would like to ask how one determines the type of an object in python. I know how to do that “normally”, e.g.,

import types

def f(x):
    return x

isinstance(f, types.FunctionType)

returns true. But what, if I have only a string containing ‘f’, say a = ‘f’. What should I do with a? How do I figure out, whether the object specified by a string is a function, or whatever? And before anyone asks, it is a parser, and that is why I don’t know whether ‘f’ is a function;)

Thanks,

v923z

Answer 1

You can look up the name in globals() (the global symbol table and locals() (the local symbol table):

Python 2.6.1 (r261:67515, Jun 24 2010, 21:47:49) 
[GCC 4.2.1 (Apple Inc. build 5646)] on darwin
Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.
>>> def f(x):
...     return x
... 
>>> globals()['f']
<function f at 0x1004c0230>
>>> import types
>>> isinstance(globals()['f'], types.FunctionType)
True
>>>